Treaty limits?

[DiFool6]

[Repost of my lost OP I mislaid in the root forum] First of all, having read the manual and the section about redesigning your fleet from scratch on the first turn, that I will be spending a LOT of time doing so, before the first shot is fired. However, many of the ships were crafted within the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty, and you really shouldn't be able to take a KG V and upgun it and up-speed it and up-range it beyond the limits of the treaty (nobody was able to design a BB with 16 inch guns & 30 knots within the 35K ton limit, for example). Just wondering if this will be taken into consideration at some point.

[Scott Chisholm]

[Repost of my lost OP I mislaid in the root forum] First of all, having read the manual and the section about redesigning your fleet from scratch on the first turn, that I will be spending a LOT of time doing so, before the first shot is fired. However, many of the ships were crafted within the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty, and you really shouldn't be able to take a KG V and upgun it and up-speed it and up-range it beyond the limits of the treaty (nobody was able to design a BB with 16 inch guns & 30 knots within the 35K ton limit, for example). Just wondering if this will be taken into consideration at some point.

You are correct in that if you modify the pre-loaded treaty ships you'll probably end up with something that violates the treaties.

However, the ship designer portion of the game will let you do just about anything you want (within reason). The size of a ship's hull will increase as you put larger guns on it. Or, more armor. Or, increase its cruising range.

If you wanted to, you could try to design a KGV-like battleship with 16 inch guns. You'd most likely have to sacrifice something else to stay within the displacement budget. Sort of like real life....

One can think of the pre-loaded ships in one of two ways: a means of playing out an alternate history starting from a historical starting place, or as a means of playing a "quick start" game where you don't have to spend any time on ship design considerations, which is really the same thing.

Tony's crafted the scenarios utilizing a resource point budget that will enable one to start with a certain tonnage in combat and merchant fleet strength. You can run with that, or modify it to you heart's content.

For instance, you can scrap all of the ships that are pre-loaded in the scenario. That will cause you to start with nothing but a bunch of resource points. From there, you can refit your fleet with your preference of historical, hypothetical, modified-historical, modified-hypothetical or player-designed units. Give the Germans a half-dozen 30kton CVs at the beginning of the Atlantic War and try to starve England with CVs instead of uboats....

But, don't forget your merchant fleet! If you don't (successfully) run convoys, you earn very few RPs, and your economy suffers. RPs are used to repair, rearm, and refuel ships, in addition to building aircraft and ships, raising troops, conducting research and improving your infrastructure. If you lose your merchant fleet early in the game, you're hosed.

If you're feeling really masochistic you can develop a Med scenario giving each side about a million tons of shipping. Set the Italians to "Very Aggressive", then play the Brits and try to run convoys between Gibraltar and Alexandria.... :D

[HBuhring]

It could be interesting to try to build "treaty" ships in SAS -- and see if anyone could invent new concepts of ships staying within those limits.

I assume that, even if the constraints are not built in the game, it will not be difficult to abide by them manually, just by checking that your designs are not violating them.

One important question arises from this, though: does the game use "standard" of "full load" displacement -- and metric tons, "long tons" or "short tons"? This has obviously no influence on gameplay, but would be crucial for a correct assessment of treaty violations.

Cheers

HB

[tony_glazebrook]

It could be interesting to try to build "treaty" ships in SAS -- and see if anyone could invent new concepts of ships staying within those limits.

I assume that, even if the constraints are not built in the game, it will not be difficult to abide by them manually, just by checking that your designs are not violating them.

One important question arises from this, though: does the game use "standard" of "full load" displacement -- and metric tons, "long tons" or "short tons"? This has obviously no influence on gameplay, but would be crucial for a correct assessment of treaty violations.

Cheers

HB

HB - as you probably know, a metric tonne (at 2204.603 lbs) is very close to (98.4% of) the long ton (of 2240 lbs) used for treaty limits. I refer in the game usually to 'tonne'; think of this as either.

Ship tonnage - including in the ship designer - is quoted as at full-load.

This makes it a little tricky to impose your own treaty limits on your designs. The Washington treaty supposedly used standard displacement. I have read conflicting accounts of what that meant: one says that it meant basically everything but excluding all fuel and reserve feed water. Another says that it meant the same as 'normal' or design desplacemnent, ie two-thirds stores and other loads (except ammo).

The best way IMO would be to say that a 35000 'tonne' treaty BB has to be <= 45000 'tonnes' full-load.

Data from Friedman's US Battleships supports this rough rule of thumb: eg the South Dakota was 34,526 long tons light displacement, 37,375 long tons standard displacement and 44,374 long tons at full load. The values for the Washington are almost identical.

Interestingly, it was the SD's light displacement that came in under the 35000, not the standard displacement. But without getting too technical, I'd say 45000 as a round full-load displacament for treaty-limited BBs.

This is of course only a suggestion - you can have whatever local rule you want. If doing PBEM, you might want to record any such rules so that both players understand and agree to such constraints. Interesting question - do you trust your PBEM opponent to keep to the treaty!

You are correct in assuming that the ship designer per se imposes no such limits. But it is not difficult to design ships that keep within whatever limit you set. You just have to keep a watch on the displacement as you go. Once you have finished the design and build a ship to it, it is saved as a design you can re-use.

[HBuhring]

I think I will review some data I have on std and full load displacements of WWII ships, and perhaps come up with a conversion chart.

Would it be acceptable to post it here?

Cheers

HB

P. S. Of course I trust my adversaries. They won't cheat on the treaties any more than historical nations did -- or -- for that reason -- more than I would do ;)

[tony_glazebrook]

I think I will review some data I have on std and full load displacements of WWII ships, and perhaps come up with a conversion chart.

Would it be acceptable to post it here?

Cheers

HB

P. S. Of course I trust my adversaries. They won't cheat on the treaties any more than historical nations did -- or -- for that reason -- more than I would do ;)

HB - I can't speak for Chris - he's the moderator. Provided stuff like this is clearly delineated as not authored by NWS I wouldn't have a problem and in fact would welcome this sharing of info, but as I said, it's up to Chris. There maybe a need to create some new threads for SAS WW2 - to cater for player feedback, and for other player-generated stuff such as this, or say for new designs that people want to share, such as new ship designs they are proud of. Chris - what say you?

[Warship NWS]

Lets get the game out there first.. and go from there. ;)

[tonedog]

werent these treaty constraints made pre-war? since the earliest a campaign in SAS can start in jan 1940 these constraints would only really apply to the USA player right since everyone else was at war by that point and the treaty went out the window.

ignore! just read that the game can start in jan 39 which makes the above statement wrong

[DiFool6]

werent these treaty constraints made pre-war? since the earliest a campaign in SAS can start in jan 1940 these constraints would only really apply to the USA player right since everyone else was at war by that point and the treaty went out the window.

ignore! just read that the game can start in jan 39 which makes the above statement wrong

The issue is that the combatants built their treaty ships according to certain restrictions, over a period of several years, and you can't just scrap them all and magically redesign them in a fortnight without the original constraints. For new ships yes there would be no limits.

[HBuhring]

Waiting for the green light to post more extensive documentation, I worked out some figures, based on several dozens of ships of all major nations. As a rule of thumb, you could estimate standard displacement to be
- about 85% of full load displacement of a Battleship/Battlecruiser (I'm not so sure about US figures, but that applies quite well to all other major navies);
- about 80% of full load displacement of a Carrier;
- about 65% of full load displacement of an Escort Carrier (here the figures vary wildly: but anyway these ships were born well after the demise of the treaties, so I don't worry too much);
- somewhat less than 80% (between 76 and 78%) of the full load displacement of a Cruiser (both 6" and 8" gunned).

I still have no figures for Escorts -- but they wouldn't be too much affected by the treaties.

Obviously, there are differences between specific designs and nations (notably: Mediterranean nations put much less stress on endurance of their ships, resulting in less fuel on board --> less difference between std and full load displacement.

Ready to discuss my data (and hopeful to improve them).

Cheers

HB